Stories tagged research
Tyrannosaurs rex: Jane, the Burpee Museum's T-rex looms out of the darkness in Rockford, IL.
Courtesy Mark RyanThree years ago, the world of vertebrate paleontology was abuzz with news of soft tissue discovered inside the fossilized femur of a Tyrannosaurus rex dug up in Montana. The discovery resulted in several published papers and science-based television shows on the subject.
Now a new study published on PloS One claims the supposedly 64 million-year-old “dino tissue” may have been nothing more than some slime that had infiltrated the fossil bone sometime around 1960.
Mary Schweitzer, the paleontologist who made the original claim for dinosaur soft tissue isn’t very happy about the new study, and is defending her research team’s original analysis. Read about the controversy here, and stay tuned for more fireworks.
Tags : Antihistamines for chronic cough in children not recommended
Although antihistamines can alleviate cough, possible side effects outweigh their benefits, say authors of a new review of studies from Australia.
Read more at Center for the Advancement of Health: Children Should Not Take Antihistamines for Chronic Cough, Reviewers Say
A direct route
Researcher William Frey II (Regions Hospital and the University of Minnesota) has stirred up conversation recently about a possible new method of administering drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. For the past 20 years, Frey has been researching and developing a nasal spray to deliver drugs directly to the brain. Other methods of delivery (such as intravenous and oral) do not allow certain drugs to cross the brain's protective blood-brain barrier.
The nasal spray method, reviewed in Drug Delivery Technology, bypasses the blood-brain barrier by delivering the drug to the nerve endings in the upper portion of the nose. These nerves lead directly to the central nervous system.
A promising development
Frey plans to test the method for the delivery of deferoximine, a drug that removes toxic amounts of iron from the body. Some scientists believe that a high level of certain metals in the brain can cause damage to brain cells , which may be part of what leads to Alzheimer's disease. If the drug's safety is proven in animal studies, Frey hopes to test the nose-to-brain delivery of deferoximine in humans.
Researchers do not yet know if this type of drug delivery could treat symptoms of Alzheimer's or if it may lead to a cure for the disease. Clinical trials in humans may be more than a year away, but Frey's discovery, along with other advances in research, offers hope for keeping patients healthy in the future.
Sources:
Drug Delivery Technology. "Nose-to-brain delivery." 5(4):64-72, 2005.
TwinCities.com. "Nose to brain is a promising path in Alzheimer's fight." 2 Feb 2008.
Posted by Meredith Craven, a communications assistant in the Academic Health Center Office of Clinical Research at the University of Minnesota
Biology Browser
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
Biological research resource
A great biology teaching resource can be found at biologybrowser.org. Both the Biology Browser home page and their search engine are subdivided into:
- organism (animals, plants, viruses)
- subjects (biodiversity, botany, genetics)
- geography (Africa, Asia, North America)
To experiment, I entered the term "turtle" in the search box which resulted in 369 hits (the MN DNR web page entry, Turtles of Minnesota was #6).
Biological database gains several hundred links per day
A fourth column lists the latest additions to the BiologyBrowser database gleaned from the Biology News Net site. This week averaged about 300 new additions per day!
Access top papers and interviews with top scientists
Biology Browser
Courtesy Art Oglesby Another feature is the "Hot Topics" box inserted top and center of the page. Todays hot topic was "stem cells". The link took me to an Essential Science Indicators page listing the top 20 papers, authors, institutions, and journals.
An editorial section features, interviews, first-person essays, profiles, and other features about people in the stem cell field. Three scientists are featured, the first being Dr. Outi Hovatta discussing her highly cited paper, "A culture system using human foreskin fibroblasts as feeder cells allows production of human embryonic stem cells"
Check it out
If you wish to keep up with advances in the biological sciences, I recommend exploring BiologyBrowser and learn to use the tools they provide.
Stem cell research milestone
Cut spinal cords, destroyed brain tissue, or damaged heart muscle can be repaired by injecting stem cells into the damaged area. Embryonic stem (ES) cells are like blank cells that give rise to every type of cell and tissue in the body. Using human embryos or unfertilized human eggs as a source of stem cells raised show-stopping opposition. Now stem cells have been produced from skin.
Human stem cells from skin
Two separate teams of researchers announced on Tuesday they had transformed ordinary skin cells into batches of cells that look and act like embryonic stem cells -- but without using cloning technology and without making embryos.
Both teams call the new cells induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and say they look and act like embryonic stem cells.
The research was published online Tuesday by two journals, Cell and Science. The Cell paper is from a team led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University; the team published by Science was led by Junying Yu, working in the lab of stem-cell pioneer James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Thompson said the technique is so simple that "thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow." In contrast, the cloning approach is so complex and expensive that many scientists say it couldn't be used routinely to supply stem cells for therapy.
Learn more
- Paper published in Science
- Paper published in Cell (pdf)
- National Institute of Health website about stem cell information
- Source article in Yahoo News
While commuting to the Science Museum of Minnesota last week I heard paleontologist, Kristi Rogers talking about her dinosaur research on the Minnesota Public Radio Midmorning program. I appreciate that MPR has an audio link allowing me to listen to the remainder of Kristi Rogers talk on MPR when I got home.
Believe it or not, US regulators are very concerned that everybody get a chance to participate in science research. Often, when applying for a grant, scientists have to give information about what populations will be included.
The government should then like the recent explosion of Web-based experiments. Experiments on the Internet are available to anyone with an Internet connection, which is already the considerable majority of Americans of a wide range of ethnicities.
I recently started a new web-based research lab, the Cognition and Language Laboratory. The experiments typically run about 5 minutes. Right now there are experiments on mother-child speech, language processing, visual cognition and birth order effects on personality. I really appreciate your participation.
CAFE SCIENTIFIQUE
Professional Guinea Pigs
Tuesday, December 19, 6:30p.m. (Doors at 5:30 p.m.)
Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater, Minneapolis
Admission $5
Dr. Carl Elliott, author and professor at the U of MN's Center for
Bioethics, discusses the use of healthy humans in medical research. As drug companies offer higher payments to test subjects, will people be tempted to undergo frequent and dangerous trials? For those who make most or all of their living as paid research subjects, what protections are in place to safeguard against their exploitation?
Some suggested pre-Cafe reading:
Guinea Pig Zero: A Journal for Human Research Subjects
ABOUT THE BELL MUSEUM'S CAFE SCIENTIFIQUE:
Cafe Scientifique is a happy hour forum for science and culture presented by the University of Minnesota's Bell Museum of Natural History. Each month, experts from a variety of fields present cutting-edge research on diverse scientific topics-- from the politics of genetic testing, to the possibility of a new flu pandemic. Host John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., keeps the discussion moving in unexpected directions and audiences are encouraged to join in. The Bell Museum's Cafe Scientifique puts current science and popular culture on the table and up for debate!
For more information or a list of scheduled Cafe Scientifique programs, visit the Bell Museum's website or call (612) 624-7083.
For directions or to purchase tickets online, visit the Bryant-Lake Bowl's website.
Please contact us if you have questions about the rights on this image.
How do you get started on the internet looking for science information? I jump on Google and get searching. But this can cause you to miss a ton of great science resources that are invisible to the search engine. Too dig a little deeper check out the Online Educational Database's Research Beyond Google -- science resources for some stuff you won't see on Google.
Science Buzz and all related activities
Add a new comment